"fieldwork"

Wed Feb 12 16:46:51 UTC 1997

		We certainly seem to be getting into strange territory in this
		discussion of fieldwork, ranging from flames (which have no
		place on this
		list, Mark) to all this about how you've got to actually live
		in the
		community to do it, which is nonsense.  I started with actual
		field work
		in 1956, and it has been a major annual preoccupation of mine
		from then
		through 1989.  I have lived in the communities, I have worked
		in my
		academic setting with native speakers, I have used native
		speakers as
		informants in field methods classes. All of this is serious
		linguistic
		fieldwork.  Living in the community is desirable when
		feasible, becoming
		a quasi-native speaker when you have that ability (I do not,
		except for
		English) is also desirable. But happily, serious field
		research is
		possible without becoming a native speaker and without living
		in the
		community. Some go out into the "bush" and some do not, but
		the former
		does not guarantee their success nor the latter their
		failure.  Let us
		see if we can't talk about field work without this
		irrelevance.

			As for books about field work, I know of two serious
			attempts at
			textbooks, one by Robbins Burling and one by William
			Samarin. Both are
			excellent attempts.  I confess that I have thought of
			attempting something
			like this myself, but have found that hands-on
			demonstration with a
			native speaker is much more effective. For good books
			aiming at doing
			analysis through field work it we need to go back in
			our history
			to the 1940s and the old textbooks put out by
			University of Michigan
			Press: Kenneth L. Pike, PHONEMICS: A Technique for
			Reducing Languages to
			Writing, 1947, and Eugene A. Nida, MORPHOLOGY: The
			Descriptive Analysis
			of Words, 1949.  The best book on field work, not a
			textbook, is far and
			away Bob Dixon's Searching for Aboriginal
			Languages. But as with most
			things, the best way to do it is to just go and do
			it.  In my own experience,
			when I began with the last speaker of Wiyot, after all
			kinds of university
			courses, I was sent up to northernCalifornia with
			notebooks and a tape recorder
			and the instructions,"bring back a grammar,
			dictionary, and texts". When, I got
			there I found myself totally bemused by these
			instructions. But I was
			fortunate to find a woman passionate to avoid her
			language's dying with
			her, and we both worked hard, and now I have published
			a grammar, texts,
			and interim dictionary -- a comprehensive lexicon is
			underway.  Just be
			cool and be serious, it can be done, and linguistic
			fieldwork offers an
			exciting route into the minds of others.

				 So okay, folks, more reminiscences and fewer
				 flames.  Your friend,
				 kvt (=Karl V. Teeter, Professor of
				 Lingusitics, Emeritus, Harvard
				 University)

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				 =========================================================================
				 Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 13:27:31 -0800
				 From: Tom Payne <tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU>
				 Subject: Re: "fieldwork"
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Karl Teeter recently posted a message in which he suggests
that contributors to this list refrain from "flames." He
then immediately caricatured a very reasonable perspective on
descriptive linguistics as "nonsense."

The reasonable perspective is that the best way to do
linguistic research is in the cultural setting in
which the language is spoken.

The caricature is that the only way to do linguistic research
is in the cultural setting in which the language is spoken.

I would agree with the reasonable perspective, and would
disagree with the caricature. But I see no reason to describe
the caricature as "nonsense." It may be wrong, but there
is some logic to it.

Lest some view Professor Teeter's flame as somehow
"proving" that the reasonable perspective is wrong (which
he didn't claim, but may be construed to have claimed), I
would like to mention again the many, many times
linguistic analyses based on decontextualized data have
been shown to be wrong or seriously incomplete when
exposed to the dynamic, uncontrolled, spontanaity of
language being used to accomplish social acts within the
cultural setting that the language is normally used.

Of course, the converse is also true. A linguistic
analysis based only on texts or conversational data may
conclude, for example, that a language has no second person declarative
forms. This is because it is extrememly uncommon for
individuals to inform others of what the others are doing:
"You are baking bread." In conversation, clauses with second person
subjects are overwhelmingly questions and commands. This
example illustrates that elicitation is absolutely
essential to fill out paradigms, and collect "inventories"
of various possible coding choice.

However, I would just disagree with the assertion that
linguistic research done outside of the cultural setting
of the speakers of the language is as sound as research
done in communities of speakers. I'm not sure if that is
the view Professor Teeter takes. Language is an expression
of culture, and learning a language, both for purposes of
analysis and speaking, is best done in a cultural setting
where that language has evolved.

Perhaps in a future post, if people are interested, I will
try to articulate a perspective on descriptive linguistics
as qualitative social science research. Linguistic
knowledge is "tacit" knowledge, and as such qualitative
methodologies, such as participant observation, are most
appropriate for illucidating it. Participant observation
may be discredited among those who view linguistics as
more of a "hard" science than a social science, but I
believe that there are certain questions about a language,
even the nuts and bolts of syntax and morphology, that
cannot be adequately understood using only quantitative
methods. But that is another topic, so I will leave it for
a future post, if there is any indication of interest.
_____________________________________________________________________
Thomas E. Payne
Department of Linguistics
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403
USA
Voice: 541 342-6706
Fax:   541 346-3917
______________________________________________________________________

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